


Revival

by seekingsquake



Series: If Seeing Is Believing Then Believe That We Have Lost Our Minds [4]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Clint Barton Needs a Hug, Depression, Gen, aftermath of brain washing, and alien invasions, and losing your closest friends, or maybe not, recovering from things is hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-25
Updated: 2014-07-25
Packaged: 2018-02-10 08:36:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2018298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seekingsquake/pseuds/seekingsquake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You aren't going to pass the evals if you don't go to your sessions."<br/>But what's the point?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Revival

**Author's Note:**

> I own nothing. And it burns.  
> Please do not repost or reupload this piece anywhere without consent. If you ask, I'm sure we can work something out :]

Clint spent the next three months in a run down apartment ignoring the one responsibility he had left. Fury had told him to go to these weekly therapy sessions with some SHIELD approved psychologist or other, but Clint only ever showed up maybe once a month. Hill popped by periodically, her arms crossed tightly over her chest and her face arranged in a way that made it look like she was glaring even when she wasn’t.

“The sooner you pass the psych evals, the sooner you get back on the field. You won’t pass the evals if you don’t go to your sessions.”

He would never respond to her, just take a swig from his beer and keep his eyes focused on the television. She would leave without another word and return three weeks later with the same little speech.

All SHIELD units had been transported back to the DC HQ except for him, and everyone from the Avengers Initiative were scattered. Tash and Rogers were in DC (together, which made Clint’s jaw click in frustration), Thor was off planet somewhere, Stark had made a grand exit of New York and jetted off back to Malibu, and Banner...

Clint didn’t actually know where Banner was.

Clint didn’t know if anyone actually knew where Banner was.

He sat around his shitty apartment drinking cheap beer and playing PS3. He didn’t answer his phone, he didn’t check his e-mails, and he didn’t invite people over. He didn’t talk to anybody. He would go to the grocery store and use the self check-outs. He didn’t watch the news and he didn’t look at any of the newspapers. He didn’t look in any mirrors. He kept his sunglasses on a good seventy percent of the time.

He was dismantling himself.

Clint had experienced emotional turmoil before. He’d been through occupational instability. There had been times in the past where he didn’t know if he could trust himself and where he knew that everyone else knew that he couldn’t be trusted. None of it had bothered him. He coasted through all of it, let it pour over him and roll off his back like it was no big deal, and moved on with his life. He didn’t know why he couldn’t do that this time.

Except, he did know.

All those times his life had fallen apart before, Clint had had things that spurred him on. He had people he needed to make proud, agencies he needed to impress, girls he needed to save. But now he had nothing. Coulson was dead. Tash had undoubtedly replaced him with someone who was taller, stronger, better. SHIELD was probably preparing to take him off the payroll. Everything he had taught himself to live for, to fight for, was already gone. What was the point of anything else?

So he went on dismantling himself because why the fuck not?

Logically, he knew that he was just in a hardcore funk and that it was understandable and actually made a certain amount of sense. He was grieving over Coulson’s death. He was just coming to terms with the fact that he’d been mind controlled, brain washed, extensively emotionally manipulated, turned inside out. He was suffering from insomnia. He knew that it made sense that he was falling apart.

But it didn’t feel like it made sense.

It felt like he was stupid and weak. It felt like he was falling behind while everyone moved forward. It felt like he was being abandoned. It felt like he was drowning. It felt like everything he’d ever known was crumbling and broken and shattered and it was all his fault, all his fault, _all his fault_. It felt like he had let everyone down, but like they were letting him down at the same time, and didn’t he deserve their help? Well, maybe he didn’t.

So. Clint spent three months in a run down, shitty apartment drinking beer that was cheap and almost unpalatable, playing PS3 sometimes but mostly staring at a blank TV screen. His phone was always ringing, but nothing seemed important so he never answered it. Eventually it stopped ringing. Or maybe he’d taken out his hearing aids and just couldn’t hear it anymore. And he dismantled himself.

It was coming up on the fourth month when there was a knock at his door. He ignored it. But three sharp knocks turned to six, turned to sixteen, turned to almost an hour’s worth of knocks, and he couldn’t ignore it anymore. He was exhausted, angry, confused, and deep down, he was sacred (always scared, everything was because he’d never been more scared). He yanked his door open and wasn’t really seeing, some Hawkeye he was, and snarled. “What the fuck do you want?”

And Phil Coulson stood there, a little weary looking, a little tired, and he said, “Barton. We need to have a discussion.”

Clint didn’t think, couldn’t think. He just slammed the door as quickly and as forcefully as he had opened it. He could almost feel Phil on the other side, could almost see the look on his face. He closed his eyes and told himself that he wasn’t shaking, told himself he wasn’t on the verge of tears, told himself that Coulson was alive.

For the first time in nearly four months, Clint laughed. He figured it couldn’t get any more fucked up than that.


End file.
